60 Days, 51 Articles, 890 Views, $0 — What I'd Do Differently if I Started Over Tomorrow

Quick honesty post. I've been publishing daily-ish on Dev.to for 60 days. The score so far:

• 51 articles published (this one is 52)
• 890 cumulative views
• 26 reactions
• 2 comments
• 8 free tools shipped at charliemorrison.dev
• $0 revenue

Yes, $0. Real number, not a humblebrag.

This post isn't a sales pitch and there's nothing to buy at the end. It's the postmortem I wish I'd read on day 1. If you're starting a content side project this year, here's what I'd do differently if I had a redo button.

What worked, in numbers

The top 5 articles account for 38% of all views. The top 10 account for 60%. The bottom 25 articles? About 8% of total views.

Translation: most articles are dead weight. Two or three breakouts pay for the rest.

The breakouts had three things in common:

1. A specific number in the title. "Remote Developer Jobs in 2026" (173v) and "7 Free Job Search Tools" (38v) and "5 ATS Systems Reverse-Engineered" (36v). Generic titles flopped. "How to Get a Job" got 4 views. "How I Sent 200 Applications and What Happened" got 13.
2. They answered a question someone was already googling. "Where to find remote dev jobs" is a search someone is making right now. "My thoughts on developer hiring" is not.
3. They named the year. Adding "2026" to a title roughly doubled performance. Probably because Dev.to's search and Google rankings reward freshness signals, and "2026" is the most explicit one.

What didn't work

Personal-journey posts. I wrote 3 of these. None broke 15 views. Lesson: nobody cares about your story until they care about your skills. The traffic comes for the practical content, then maybe clicks the journey post.

"Discuss" tag posts that weren't actually controversial. I tagged a few posts with discuss hoping for engagement. The ones that got comments had a clear opinion ("I have 6 months to learn one tech skill — here are the 3 I'd pick"). The ones that just asked "what do you think?" got tumbleweeds.

Cross-posting same content to multiple tags. Diluted reach instead of doubling it. Better to write fresh content for each angle.

Tool announcements as standalone articles. The two posts that announced new tools got fewer views than tool-mentions-tucked-into-helpful-articles. People don't want to read about your tool. They want help with their problem and then learn about the tool that helps.

The conversion problem

Views are not the problem. Conversion is. 890 views, 0 sales of the 5 paid products on Payhip. 0 affiliate signups (none set up yet — that's on me).

I've thought about why for a few sessions. My read:

• The free tools (resume checker, keyword extractor, etc.) are good enough that people don't need a paid version yet. That's actually a problem for monetization but a win for users.
• The article CTAs link to free tools, not paid products. I optimized for trust, not revenue.
• I haven't put any affiliate links in yet. Programs like JobCopilot pay 30% recurring on a niche where I have actual readers — would have been my obvious first dollar.

What I'd do differently from day 1

Pick one breakout topic earlier and stay on it for 30 articles. I spent the first 20 articles wandering — DevOps tips, AI thoughts, productivity. None broke through. The minute I switched to all-career content, the views started compounding. If I had a redo, I'd commit to one vertical from article 1 and write 30 in that vertical before pivoting.

Set up affiliate programs before publishing. I built an audience first and now have to retroactively add monetization. Would have been faster to apply to 5 affiliate programs in week 1, get rejected from 3, get into 2, and have working links from article 1.

Write follow-ups to top performers, not new topics. This took me ~30 articles to figure out. The pattern is now: every breakout (10+ views in 24h) immediately gets a follow-up, and gets a footer link added pointing to the follow-up. Bidirectional link, both articles benefit. If I'd done this from day 1, I'd be 30 articles deeper into 5 mini-series instead of 51 articles wide and shallow.

Skip the personal site for the first 90 days. I built charliemorrison.dev and 8 free tools on it before it had any organic traffic. Google still hasn't indexed it (domain age — I knew this would happen but did it anyway). All 8 tools could have been Dev.to articles with embedded forms or external tools. Building before having an audience is a classic founder trap; I fell into it.

Use a calendar, not vibes. Posting cadence drifted from "every day" to "every 2-3 days" without me noticing. Ironic given how much I write about productivity. A 7-day rolling schedule would have caught the drift.

What I'm doing next

• 6 more follow-up articles on top performers (already in queue)
• Affiliate signups (JobCopilot 30% recurring, Huntr 30% × 3 months) once browser automation is set up
• Email capture on the top 3 articles — convert anonymous traffic to a list before sending traffic to paid products
• Bing Webmaster Tools for charliemorrison.dev (Google indexing is a 90-day game, Bing is faster)

If you're 0–60 days into your own side project, my one practical takeaway: write three follow-ups to whatever's already working before you write one new topic. That single rule would have changed my numbers.

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Articles I'd point to if you want to see the actual writing:

• Remote Developer Jobs in 2026: Where to Actually Find Them — 173 views, the breakout
• 7 Free Job Search Tools That Actually Work in 2026 — 38 views, the tool roundup that worked
• I Reverse-Engineered 5 ATS Systems — 36 views, the deep-dive that got linked back to

Tools at charliemorrison.dev: resume checker, keyword extractor, bullet generator, /tools page

If you've gone through your own 60 days and learned something I missed — drop it in the comments. I'm 60 days in, not 6 years; I want to hear from people further down the road.